Page 95 of Her Dreadful Will
“Tell me,” Soleil said, “why you hate the Convocation so much.”
Achan flinched inside, but he tried to keep his features impassive.
Why did she have to ask that particular question? Of all the things she might want to know about him, of course it had to be this—the question that conjured his most painful memory.
Soleil’s blue eyes darkened with sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, when he didn’t answer. “I didn’t realize.”
She did this all too often, picking up on his slightest mood changes. How did she do it? It wasn’t as if she’d known him long. She’d had little time to learn his microexpressions. And yet.
Maybe years of studying people’s wills and motives had made her extra perceptive, even without the use of her power.
What would it feel like to have her inside his mind, tuning and taming his will, conducting him like an orchestra?
The fear of that invasion had prompted him to make the darkest deal of his life, to part with a generous chunk of the savings his parents had set aside for him. He had risked everything—exposure of his past and his future—just to protect himself from Soleil. The pain of the ritual itched at his mind. It was a memory almost as dark as the one Soleil had asked for, woven in shadow and blood, punctuated with his own agonized screams.
He couldn’t risk her seeing inside him, or controlling him. That privilege, that power would belong to no one, ever. Although he’d begun to doubt that even the mandala could protect him from her if she decided she wanted to get through it. She’d tried, half-heartedly, but she was too soft to his pain, too tender to really hurt him.
The universe couldn’t have chosen a more ideal host for this rare and terrifying power of hers.
How he had first discovered her and her ability—the real reason he’d come to this town—they were harsh, naked truths she wasn’t ready to hear.
But he had given her a piece of himself earlier today, and he could give her one more. This memory, torturous though it was, might be the wedge he needed to deepen her rift with the Convocation and its school of lies.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “If you’ll do magic with me afterward.”
She pressed her phone to look at the time. “It’s late, but—all right.”
Of course she agreed. That insatiable curiosity of hers—why was it so damn charming?
He scooted a little closer to her, stretching his arm along the couch like a teenager on his first date with a girl in her parents’ living room. Soleil moved away immediately, angling herself to face him and setting her back to the armrest. Discouraged, he almost withdrew his arm, but before he could pull it away, she laced the fingers of her left hand with his.
His heart thudded harder, blood pumping hot through his body. The contact shouldn’t affect him this deeply. With any other woman it wouldn’t, but with her—the knot of his carefully woven control unraveled a little further.
Control was important. Control and balance kept the chaos at bay—maintained his tenuous position as master over it. Without control, without a steady dose of radiance from the sun or the moon, the chaos would eat him alive. He wasn’t sure exactly what would happen; he’d never let it go far enough. He could guess that sucking in too much chaos would mean death, consumption from the inside out. Either that, or a cruel insanity that would unleash his power on the world in a way that elated and scared him.
“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” Soleil said, her hand sliding warm over his knee. “We’ll go do the magic anyway.”
“No, I want to tell you. I think it will help you understand.” He cleared his throat, because the words seemed to stick there, unwilling. He’d never told this story to anyone. “I was nine when I found out about my cousin’s magic. You know magic skips around within families—sometimes there’s no one for generations, and it’s all but forgotten.”
Soleil nodded, her blue eyes brimming with sympathy and interest.
“Well, my cousin Blake was seventeen. He was a morphling witch—could transform himself or other objects into different forms—something else of similar size and composition.”
Soleil gasped. “That’s incredibly rare.”
“As rare as yours.” He nodded. “My aunt and uncle are cognizants because of him. They’re the ones who helped me hide my magic, and helped me find the information I needed to learn more about my affinity. Like me, they hate the Convocation, because—well, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He rubbed his forehead. “Blake was already on the Convocation’s blacklist by the time I found out what he could do. He tended to be reckless with his magic, using it to prank people, get test answers, and shoplift sometimes—nothing terrible, just high school trouble. He’d been warned against using his magic, and the Convocation had someone watching him. One weekend, when I was visiting him, we went into town and found the house of this girl who dumped him, and Blake morphed her little Ferrari into a Ford. I added some rust for good measure. The next time I saw him, he had a restraining bracelet on his wrist. He told me that the Convocation had locked away his magic.”
A lump surged into Achan’s throat and he swallowed it fiercely, angrily. He sank the nails of his left hand into his palm and spoke, low and measured. “I was ten. I wanted to show off my magic, and see more of his. So while we were walking in the woods on his parents’ land, I—I disintegrated the restraining bracelet. I told him, ‘You’re free now. You can do whatever you want.’ And he looked at me—”
Achan choked on the words. He could see Blake’s face as clearly as he had that day—first the shock when the bracelet disappeared, and then the terrible sadness and love in his cousin’s gaze. “Give me a second.”
Achan closed his eyes, clenching his teeth until they ached. If he were home he would run outside and rot a tree, or dry up a patch of the lawn, or shatter a rock into fragments—anything to let out a little of the chaos and pain.
“What do you need?”
At Soleil’s gentle question, he opened his eyes again. “You got anything I can break?”
She winced, looking around the living room—neat and pretty, full of cushions and patterns and beautiful things.
